Fritz Tiedemann

Pariser Platz (south side), 21st April 1951

Between 1948 and 1953, photographer and technical surveyor Fritz Tiedemann was commissioned by the urban administration of East Berlin to undertake extensive documentation of architecture and urban planning in the capital of the GDR. Many of his early visual documents are series of images conceived as panoramas, whereby the sweep of the camera gives a comprehensive impression of emptiness and the extent of war damage in the city. Processed as contact copies and stuck onto archive covers, his many photographs are one important, early basic collection of a photo archive that was extended consistently until 1990. It has been kept in the architectural collection of the Berlinische Galerie since 1992. An in-depth study of the collection was facilitated with support from the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, and the results were made available to the public in the shape of the publication “Ost-Berlin und seine Bauten” in 2006. In 2008 a selection of Tiedemann’s photographs was shown to the public in the exhibition “So weit kein Auge reicht. Berliner Panoramafotografien aus den Jahren 1949-1952. Aufgenommen von Fritz Tiedemann. Rekonstruiert und interpretiert von Arwed Messmer” (As far as no eye can see. Berlin panorama photographs from the years 1949-1952. Taken by Fritz Tiedemann. Reconstructed and interpreted by Arwed Messmer.) A catalogue of the same name was also published; it has since been produced in a second, revised edition.

Pariser Platz (south side), 21st April 1951Archive cover with contact copies of the original negativesSilver gelatine paper on paper, 18.5 x 24.6 cmTaken over from the collections of the Urban Administration for Urban Development, Housing and Transport Berlin [East] via the Senate Administration for Building and Housing Berlin, 1991.